But Micah Johnson — and most any player — will tell you this is where the action is. This is what hurts most when it’s snatched away, as Johnson now knows.

The running gags.

The off-day exchanges.

The behind-the-scenes buffoonery.

“That’s the biggest thing, what it really boils down to, with all of your football memories,” says Johnson, while, post-practice at McMahon Stadium, watches a few of his Calgary Stampeders teammates ham it up with lacrosse sticks. “If you go back to your high school days, you can’t remember that many games, but you remember all those moments you had with the guys in the locker-room. You remember all the little moments.

“In college (at the University of Kentucky), same thing. I remember some games, I remember some plays, but I have a thousand more memories of just being in the locker-room and being around the guys.

“Same thing up here — it’s great to get out there and play in front of these fans. But it’s all the time outside of it, that you spend with the guys, that make those moments special.”

Almost on cue, defensive-line coach DeVone Claybrooks sashays over to offer this high-decibel assessment of Johnson: “He is fat and he is lazy. I don’t know what I’m going to do with him. If any team wants him, I’d trade him for a case of Molson . . .”

Beaming, Johnson — broad-shouldered and deep-chested, even by football standards — soaks it up.

Later, the 26-year-old says: “I’m one of the bigger guys on the team, but I get joked at . . . more than anybody else. I get beat up by all the defensive backs, offensive linemen. Everybody always messes at me, picks at me. So it’s always fun.”

The exception to fun, of course, had been 2013, his first kick at the Canadian Football League.

Johnson sat out seven weeks with a wrenched oblique. (“Felt like somebody stabbed me.”) In Game 18, the defensive tackle wrecked his knee — which required surgery, which required more than a winter’s worth of rehabilitation at the Atlanta Falcons’ facility.

Meaning he missed the Stamps’ playoff appearance, their recent exhibition dates, not to mention the home-opener last month.

But now Johnson is back in action.

Hence the full-wattage grinning these days.

“When you’re hurt, you’re still part of the jokes, man,” says Corey Mace, “but you haven’t put your time in. So it’s good to see him out there having fun.”

Saturday in Toronto — after eight-plus months of gamelessness — Johnson finally got to tug the No. 93 jersey over his shoulder pads.

“I had butterflies from excitement,” he says, “I had butterflies from nervousness.”

The result — 34-15 win, with no lingering ACL issues — came as a relief. Grading himself a C — “at best” — he said he had performed OK. But his presence was welcome.

“Explosive athlete,” Mace said of his trench partner. “Strong as an ox. He’s got the aggressiveness that you like to see in defensive linemen. All of that brings havoc, which takes the pressure off me.”

Returning from injury is partly mental — by not being preoccupied by your wound. In Johnson’s case, it meant forgetting about his knee brace.

Which is exactly what happened — he forgot his knee brace . . . in Calgary.

“It made it easier for me to let go of it because I (played without it) and everything was fine,” says Johnson, chuckling. “It put me in the position that I had to make up my mind, right then and there, that I’d be fine.”

Now his education — from linebacker in the States to lineman in Canada — can continue.

“He’s still learning the position, so he’s real raw,” Claybrooks says of the evolution that began early last year. “Which is a great thing because he’s an empty canvas and I can mould him. He doesn’t have bad habits.”

What Johnson does possess is an appetite for contact.

And that helps to smooth out the shift to the line of scrimmage.

“The physical part of the game, I thrive in,” says Johnson. “A lot of times with linebackers, when they move to the line, it’s the physical part of the game that’s hard for them. Because I like that . . . the transition wasn’t that hard. The hardest thing is rushing the passer, that’s the biggest adjustment because it truly is an art form.

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Stamps’ Johnson thrilled to be back in action on the field and off it with teammates